Conventional wisdom insists that war crimes and atrocities by U.S forces in
Vietnam were isolated, committed by a "few bad apples" and "rogue
units." In fact, for 40 years the American public has been collectively
assuring the veterans of that war that no one considers them "baby killers"
nor believes that the My Lai massacre was anything more than an aberration.

But what if there was evidence otherwise — that Americans killed more civilians
during direct combat operations than our conventional wisdom allows, and what
if those killings were deemed more than mere "accidents" or "collateral
damage," but murder – the result of policies and practices that set the
conditions for carnage at the highest levels of the command?

What if it was also discovered that much of this was unknown to the press and
the public – and even elected officials in Washington – because there were conscious
attempts to bury numerous allegations, investigations, witness testimony – even
substantiated massacres and crimes – for the sake of the Army’s reputation and
for ongoing public support of the war?

For Nick Turse, an investigative journalist and managing editor of TomDispatch.com,
his accidental discovery 10 years ago of what he describes as a trove of never-before-seen
documents buried in the annals of the National Archives, could have been viewed
as an impossible burden. These documents do everything suggested in the preceding
two paragraphs and more. His formidable personal choice a decade ago: leave
history in its uneasy, half-told entombment, or re-open a wound that nearly
bled the country dry a generation ago, at a time before he was even born.

Turse, then a doctoral student at Columbia University at the time, chose the latter.
A decade later he has produced a compelling book that packages everything he
found in the archives, plus reams of government documents, forgotten research
and interviews he collected in his subsequent quest. Kill Anything That Moves:
The Real American War in Vietnam, threatens to shatter preconceptions about
the American way of war, and invokes perhaps the most important question to
emerge – so what are we going to do about it?

For Gen-Xers like Turse and myself, the answer is plain enough: learn.
But as we’ve found, painfully, after the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, which span more years than the "official"
timeline of U.S military operations in Vietnam (1964-1973), this is something
the military struggles with, always. Even as so-called "warrior scholars"
like David Petraeus, who
made a name re-envisioning counterinsurgency doctrine after Vietnam, trying
(and many can argue, failed) to make invasion, pacification and occupation more
"population-centric," the military never addressed the worst of its
policies (and its own culture), and therefore continues to teach a history based
on a whitewash, with some pop-variations to make them appear transformative.
The effect, in essence: Groundhog Day.

Case in point: the nation’s war colleges are still teaching the book Sharpening
the Combat Edge: The Use Of Analysis To Reinforce Military Judgment,
which was written by the late Maj. General Julian Ewell and his former Chief
of Staff Col. Ira Hunt for the Department of the Army in 1991. Together, they
led a notoriously bloody rampage to secure the Mekong Delta in 1968 known as
Operation Speedy
Express. Turse argues, quite effectively, footnoted all the way, that Speedy
Express employed every tactical framework and policy – both implicit and explicit
– responsible for the unusually high civilian casualty count in the war overall
(estimated 2 million). This included overwhelming firepower, the "search
and destroy" missions, the employment of "free fire zones" that
encouraged U.S forces to ignore the normal rules of engagement (ROE) that protect
civilians, and the extraordinary pressure generated by the "body count"
as the chief measure of operational success.

Sharpening the Combat Edge is a whitewash – even Ewell and Hunt were
forced to omit any reference to the official 1972 inquiries into what Turse
called the operation’s "industrial-scale slaughter." Reporters
had attempted to get at the truth but it did not matter. Ewell, who was once
called "the Butcher of the Delta" by his own men, remained lionized
until his death in 2009, and Sharpening the Combat Edge became part of
the official narrative. That is until now, as Turse revives a little known (buried)
and powerfully damning 1972 Army Inspector General’s report that lends official
substantiation to charges that some 5,000 to 7,000 civilians may have
perished in the eight months under Ewell’s command, and that such deaths were
"a constant, accepted and indeed inevitable result" of Operation Speedy
Express.

That is far more than the "history" so far has allowed, and all but
obliterates the notion that My Lai (the
1968 massacre and cover-up, in which upwards of 500 Vietnamese were killed,
raped, and mutilated by U.S forces, and for which only one platoon leader was
ever convicted, only serving three and a half years under house arrest) was
an isolated event.

Operation Speedy Express, however, is just one piece –one brick – in the ivy-grown wall
that Turse found himself dismantling after he first discovered the boxes labeled
"Vietnam War Crimes Working Group," which he refers to as a secret
Pentagon task force that had been assembled after My Lai under the direction
of General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S forces in Vietnam (1964-68),
in the National Archives. "Box after box" of these heretofore secret
papers (including sworn statements from officers in the field at the time) indicated
there were more than 300 allegations of murders, rapes, torture, assaults, mutilation and
"other atrocities," substantiated by the group, as well as 500 others
that were unproven at time. Most of these revelations had not been aired in
the press, nor in a public inquiry, ever.

Turse had stumbled on the documents while studying post traumatic stress disorder
in veterans for his original dissertation. The rest of his quest at the archives
was much more methodical: he sought and found thousands of pages of other investigations,
IG reports, plus documents he received through repeated Freedom of Information
Act requests, and interviews with over 100 veterans about incidents that up to
now were mere wisps of memory in an overgrown rice paddy somewhere. He went
to those rice paddies too – traveling to Southeast Asia, tracking down the villages
corresponding to the reports back home, and interviewing aging Vietnamese about
long dead family members and horrors they endured, while Turse’s wife Tam captured
their wizened faces to include among the more gruesome photographs in the book.

Sometimes the inquiries he made while in Vietnam about one known massacre led
to another. "I’d thought that I was looking for a needle in a haystack,"
he wrote, "what I found was a veritable haystack of needles."

Some may think Turse will get pricked by those needles, dredging up the past.
There will be plenty who think they can poke holes in his conclusions. One need
not look further than the
beating veteran John Kerry got nine years ago over his participation in
the 1971 Winter
Soldier Investigation, to know that there will always be those who consider
raising the issue of American war crimes and atrocities in Vietnam an unpatriotic,
if not treasonous, act.

A few things about this book: Turse seems genuinely, and equally empathetic,
if not personally affected by the traumas endured by both the American veteran
and Vietnamese civilian. He counts as life-long friends the veterans who helped
him on his quest, believing, that while high-ranking officers — beginning with
Gen. Westmoreland himself — protected their own, it was the grunts who paid,
if not directly, but emotionally for what happened.

Turse is relentless in documenting individual horrors, so even the most detached
reader cannot help but feel overwhelmed by the level of destruction here, and
the seemingly cold-blooded ways in which unarmed civilians were erroneously
pegged as Viet Cong and cut down from the skies or on the ground, their numbers
invariably – and deliberately — inflating the almighty body count. Meanwhile,
there are endless stories of Vietnamese – all footnoted — who escaped the gun
or grenade but were left homeless standing in the ruin of their villages, corpses
of family and livestock scattered among napalm ashes. This is not an easy read.
"Small doses" is sometimes the best way to get through it.

Tran Thi Nhut. Credit: Tam Turse. Her house burned down and her 70-year-old mother and 12-year-old son killed, along with 30 other civilians in a 1967 massacre by U.S troops in Phi Phu hamlet, Quang Nam Province

Historians might say most American forces had followed the ROE (though Turse
found a post-war survey of generals indicating only 19 percent felt ROE was
adhered to "throughout the chain of command" before My Lai) and, that
there was no other way to attempt victory than with the firepower they brought
to bear or the "pacification" measures taken. The enemy, it is said,
came from all sides and was indistinguishable in key areas like the Mekong Delta.

Of course this leads one to suggest, then, that we might not have fought this war
in the first place.

"(It is) difficult to see how a greatly different mode of operation on
the part of American ground forces could have been implemented in practice,
considering the realities of the battlefield," wrote Eric M. Bergerud,
in The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (1991).

Turse is cognizant of the gray areas and complexities of the Vietnam battlefield,
but does not spend a lot of time tussling with alternative historical views
or dealing with how America had accrued its own losses: 58,209 dead; 153,303
wounded. Instead, by cracking open old files, and "inhaling decades-old
dust from half a world away," he prefers to reveal new sources of information
and seems keen on doing that coherently and for maximum impact, carrying on
where journalists on the subject in the 1970’s – like Seymour
Hersh, who exposed My Lai, and Kevin Buckley, who wrote the
damning, but heavily censored expose on Operation Speedy Express for Newsweek
in 1972, left off. Buckley handed Turse much of his research with co-author,
the late Alexander Shimkin, to assist in Kill Anything that Moves.

Contrary to what the critics will say, Turse appears in no haste to generalize,
which would risk the credibility of his work and the hard fought acknowledgement
for the victims and the veterans who tried and failed to get their claims substantiated
at the time. Instead, he seems driven by one measure: to lay the blame where
it belongs, at the top.

Antiwar: The conventional wisdom is that war crimes and atrocities committed
by U.S forces in Vietnam were isolated events perpetuated by a "few bad
apples" – rogue units and platoons. How does your research – this book
– shatter that perception?

Turse: The War Crimes Working Group offers irrefutable proof of atrocities
committed by every major Army unit that deployed, every division and separate
brigade that went to Vietnam. And just looking at the numbers, and then going
to Vietnam and talking to people, I realized how pervasive the scale of that
carnage was. This is what I try to convey in Kill Anything that Moves.

We’re talking about, according to the best estimates we have — two million
Vietnamese civilian dead. Add to that five million wounded, and the best numbers
that U.S. government came up with was about eleven million Vietnamese made refugees.
On top of that, studies show that about four million Vietnamese were exposed
to defoliants like Agent Orange.

Obviously, it’s beyond what a couple of rogue units, even a couple of rogue
divisions could do. The level of carnage was almost unimaginable. I hope that Kill
Anything that Moves helps to put the rest the idea of bad apples and rogue
units.

Antiwar: The emphasis on body counts, the search and destroy missions, free
fire zones, heavy artillery – are all tactical frameworks that you argue set
the conditions for these war crimes and atrocities to happen, whether there were
explicit orders to kill civilians or not. How do you counter the establishment
histories, especially those that are used to teach officers today, that acknowledge
many of these things but claim a) conditions on the ground made it difficult
to do things much differently and b) most of our forces were indeed adhering
to the proper rules of engagement.

Turse: I think it’s hard to argue against the fact that millions of
Vietnamese were killed, wounded and made refugees. And this was due to deliberate
U.S policies, like the use of unrestrained bombing and artillery shelling over
a wide swath of the countryside, and due to search and destroy missions, and
the overwhelming emphasis on body counts. It’s also irrefutable that these policies
were dictated at the highest levels of the military. What I try to point out
is that the American way of war did not just produce a random string of massacres
but a veritable system of suffering. That system, the machinery of suffering
and what it meant to the Vietnamese people, is what Kill Anything that Moves
is meant to explain. I think it would be hard to look at those numbers and
read the litany of daily events and come to any other conclusion. This was certainly
policy, not bad apples.

Antiwar:You went into the National Archives to research PTSD and
you came out 10 years later, an expert in Vietnam war crimes. What kept you
at this quest?

Turse: I was born after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and I didn’t have
any personal connection to the war. It began as a job, researching PTSD among
Vietnam vets. I stumbled upon these records and they really put a hook in me.
As I read through them, I knew the records weren’t in the literature, anywhere.
I contacted some Vietnam War historians that I knew and l told them they needed
to get down to the archives and look at this collection. One of them said to
me, ‘you should do it, you found them and you know their significance.’ …I was
just a novice Vietnam War historian at that time, but his confidence in me convinced
me I could do it. And I really thought it was way too important to let go. I
thought it was necessary for the historical record because the files told a
story that wasn’t in the existing literature. So I started to work with (the
documents) and wrote my dissertation on the topic.

Then I thought these records were too important to just remain in an academic
document that most people were never going to see. I went to the Los Angeles
Times and I put together a series (with Deborah Nelson). They sent me to Vietnam
for the first time. I went with a stack of documents in my hands and talked
to people throughout the countryside. That first experience and, especially
subsequent research trips, really transformed my project. I went to talk to
someone about one specific spasm of violence and they ended up telling me about
what it was like to live for 10 years under bombs and artillery shells and helicopter
gunships and how they negotiated their lives around the American War.

They would talk about what it was like to have their homes burned four or five
or six times and then give up rebuilding in favor of living a semi-subterranean
life in their bomb shelter … then they would tell me what it was like to leave
the bomb shelter. There were constant choices involved – there were times when
the artillery shelling was raining down and everyone would run to the bomb shelter
and then you would spend all of your time working out when you would leave it…
you had to time it right. If you left too soon you could come out and a helicopter
above could spot you and shoot. If you waited too long American forces might
roll grenades in for fear there were guerillas hiding in there… having to grapple
with this, day after day, year after year, just impressed on me what the war
really meant to the people who had to experience it every day… this is the real
story of the war. This transformed my project from what it had been to what
Kill Anything that Moves ultimately became.

Antiwar: No matter what you do, you will be accused of broad brushing the
entire military with these crimes. You will be accused of being anti-military.
How do you handle that?

Turse: While I emphasize the fact that the Vietnamese were constantly
in untenable situations, I try to explain that many times the U.S troops were
also in extremely complex situations and were operating in extremely difficult
conditions. They were given mixed messages, like rote instructions about treating
the Vietnamese civilians well when almost every other aspect of U.S. military
policy seemed to run counter to the notion, including extreme pressure to produce
high body counts. You can’t excuse individual culpability for things like massacres
and outright murder, but I tried to tell as best I could a nuanced story. I
have been accused by some of producing a book that is anti-military. A few people
have claimed that Kill Anything that Moves malignsall those who served,
but really, this book is the story of Vietnam veterans, told by Vietnam veterans.
I interviewed well over 100 American veterans, spoke to many more, and I relied
on thousands and thousands of pages of sworn testimony of both active duty soldiers
and recently-returned veterans about their experiences, and that is the story
told in the book. This is their own view of the war – I just tried to put it
together in a comprehensive way.

Antiwar: Were you at all surprised at the level of cover up you found in
those (National Archives documents), the many allegations, the testimonies and
letters to congressmen and military officials that were suppressed, ignored
or had sparked inquiries, investigations that never went anywhere, or were
concluded without results?

Turse: By nature I’m not one who is prone to conspiracy theories … I
had a tough time believing that it was as systematic, as well orchestrated as
it turned out to be. I talked to a military lawyer who had been an advisor to
the head of the Army Criminal Investigation Division during the Vietnam War,
who was still working in the Army as a civilian lawyer at the time I talked
to him. What he impressed on me is that, especially at the end of the war, everyone
just wanted the war to go away, at every level, from the investigators who were
supposed to be rigorously investigating allegations, to the base commanders
who had jurisdiction over men who were charged, to the judges and the juries
at court martial proceedings — everyone in the legal system was predisposed
against actually carrying out legitimate justice. For all the reasons you’d
expect, it was not popular to prosecute Americans for crimes against the Vietnamese.
If you have an entire system predisposed against the process then that process
is going to fall apart …

Antiwar: As a nation, we’ve spent the last 40 years assuring veterans that
we don’t blame them for what happened in Vietnam. So much so, that today, if
we criticize the war we’re told we’re we are criticizing the troops, which gives
the military and policymakers cover for their decisions. Are you afraid you’ll
hit a wall in terms of the impact this book can have on such carefully managed
history? What do you hope to accomplish?

Turse: I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised at the reaction that
the book has received as I was prepared to have it just disappear. So in that
sense, maybe I am reaching an audience, however limited, thatis open
to learning more and is willing to reconsider the existing narrative of the
war. I hope that the book, within the (Vietnam) literature, will become a text
that you will at least have to consider when writing about Vietnam … In the
past (this story) was sidelined and it disappeared from the literature… scholars
assumed it was antiwar propaganda and it was shunned by serious academics. It
became a hidden and forbidden history. I hope my book can revive some interest
in that literature and give those histories a second look.

Antiwar: Can we relate any of these revelations to the wars we just fought
in Iraq and Afghanistan? Has the military learned its lessons when it comes
to the treatment of indigenous populations or are we merely repeating the same
mistakes?

Turse: I’ve studied today’s wars and have to say that I don’t think
that the killing of civilians by U.S. forces is anywhere near the scale of the
carnage in Vietnam… that said, civilians still die on a regular basis in our
war zones, be it Iraq or Afghanistan – many due to violence set off by America’s
invasions and occupations and resulting civil strife. And of course others have
been killed directly by U.S. bombing, from helicopter gunships and from troops
on the ground. Many have been wounded and made refugees.

Even with the best efforts of the UN and other NGOs, (non-governmental organizations)
we still don’t have good numbers on the human toll of these wars. And if history
is any guide, I fear it will be decades before anyone is able to put together
the full story of these wars. I’m afraid it might take 40 years before some
reporter or historian is able to set the record straight.

Antiwar: It’s even easier now, right, for the military to write its own
narrative of Iraq and Afghanistan, considering that the media doesn’t have the
kind of access they had in Vietnam?

Turse: The lessons I learned about Vietnam were quite different from
the lessons the military learned. They have long blamed their loss on the antiwar
movement and politicians back home and, of course, the press. Since Vietnam,
they have really tried to manage the press – with embedding being the most conspicuous
effort. Journalists had relatively unfettered access in Vietnam and that was
considered a liability. (The military) has tried their best to make sure there
was nothing like that in the wars to come after.

Note: The War Crimes Working Group (documents) that sparked Turse’s quest
have since been removed from the public shelves of the National Archives. Most
are still unavailable and can only be viewed by filing a Freedom of Information
Request.

Impossible not to relate this to what's happening today. Considering how they've managed to turn the public around on the issue of torture, it would obviously take no more than one bad apple TV show carrying the message that genocide is a necessary evil for the rot to spread even further.
Thanks to Nick Turse though for helping to straighten out the historical record: it's probably not going to wake too many people up, but it will be still be there after Bradley Manning is out of chokey.
Meanwhile where are those journalists prepared to dig deep into the WikiLeaks Iraq and Afghan war logs?

Hopefully it won't take them another 50 years to get to that, like it did for Vietnam. And we still haven't heard much about World War II atrocities committed by the so-called "good guys", the "Allies"(or is it "all-lies") after 70 years, except in publications like 'The Barnes Review'.

Ah, those were the "good old times" of the US war in Vietnam…. The war in Cambodia, Panama, the Caribbic, Iraq, Afghanistan and hopefully soon Iran…..and let's not forget the everlasting War on Terror !

The fiction has always been that the antiwar movement of the 60's made up allegations of our soldiers killing civilians, including babies, but what is ignored is that these allegations were based on first-hand, anecdotal evidence by the soldiers themselves. By 1968, many soldiers weren't denying what Vietnam was about; it was the political partisans of the war who maintained denial and the lies. The same sort as the Karl Roves of this century. War violence of this sort has a profound effect upon society as a whole, and I suspect Newtown was a second or third order effect of our current wars, just as much of the violence of the 60's grew directly out of the Vietnam experience, both actual and vicarious. It's not surprising that Westmoreland, The General Who Lost Vietnam (as described in a book by the same name, which is sycophantic toward General Abrams instead), who maintained a disinformation campaign of his own to cover up his failed strategy, and manipulated intelligence in doing so, would have a hand in seeing these files would remain buried.

Bravo Ms. Kelley and bravo to Mr. Turse. This is a stroll down memory lane. Not such a good stroll. I heard the tales from the guys coming home. I saw the strings of ears, the trophy hands, and those lovely Claymore's that came home. Guys in the 'assassin units' were ruined for life. Then there's the Kissinger atrocities.
I'm still of the opinion that America needs to bring back the draft. Nothing can fuel an antiwar movement like conscription. Yeah, I was drafted. What a delightful experience…

Meticulously researched and articulated. Mr. Turse is to be lauded for attempting and having the courage to educate the population about the horrors of war. The horrors of Vietnam are resurfacing in Afghanistan as we draw the civilian population into the quagmire with massive artillery and air bombardment, indiscriminate drone strikes and midnight raids into peoples homes. This book should be read by all who are concerned with the empirical path the country seems bent on taking.

Wow Kelley! I just bought the book and will have to read it as a first priority. People forget that all soldiers are trained to kill – that is what basic training is all about. Try to recall the Marine Drill Instructor in Full Metal Jacket – he was probably more articulate in his blasphemies than most DIs but I am sure that every Vietnam era vet like myself watching the movie found him all too real. So given the right kind of mix of training, of orders for body counts from above, and the very real threat to one's own personal survival, it is easy to understand how the average grunt became more than a little bit trigger happy. There is, of course, also a racial and cultural aspect to it. Vietnamese were gooks or slope heads just as today's enemies are Ragheads or Hajis.

Yes, Nick Turse is to be commended for his newest book, "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam". This book should bring the unpalatable but essential truth about America's war crimes against Viet Nam to a wider audience, especially those who have been kept in ignorance far too long.

Hopefully, it will also help us to better understand what is really happening in our continuing wars of aggression in various other unfortunate countries today, where innocent people are being subjected to the daily horrors of death, torture, destruction and displacement, all for the obscene profits of the few.

Of course, enough of the horrors and war crimes exposed in Nick Turse's new book were known at the time, for those who cared to know. If that message failed to be heard, that’s another thing entirely! As with the current war crimes, we cannot later say "we didn't know!"

In order to show how Turse is a liar, let's start with his "2 million dead civilian" comment where he implies that 2 million civilians were killed by US forces. His number is from the communist Vietnamese government(and commies never lie), and includes "all war related deaths between 1950 and 1975, on both sides of the conflict. American servicemen who engaged in improper behavior were arrested, tried and if convicted, imprisoned. Communists who engaged in war crimes were rewarded. I could go item by item from this modern day hipsters nonsense, but its been done so many times I am truly amazed it still has to be done.
War is a horrible thing and should be avoided if possible, but ridiculous propaganda should probably be avoided, too. You don't win anyone to your side when you pretend ALL soldiers are rapists and murderers, but when nonsense like this is featured, I can understand why the anti-war movement is doing so poorly in the US.

I spent my war on the Cambodian border as a draftee with the 1st Infantry Division, May 69- April 70. I did not see one dead civilian. Many, many dead uniformed Pavn-Nva, many dead Americans but not one dead baby, girl, woman or man. How could that be? Was I in a vacuum? It was said many times in my 5 years of PTSD therapy that everyone's war was different. I was there in Vietnam in my own microcosm I guess. There is one thing that doesn't ring true to me in the sensational account made by Mr. Turse who believes atrocities were rampant and an everyday occurrence. That is that I noticed that the inherent goodness that was instilled in most of the 19-21 year old young men by their christian(BTW I am not religious) upbringing did not just leap from their bodies because they succumbed to the Army training to be an automatically mindless combat soldier. We all were not that gullible or naive. You had to be thoughtful to survive that environment, there weren't very many dumb infantryman despite what you may think. I served with honor and restraint as did most around me. I didn't believe the propaganda from any side, most of which was viewed as a joke, ridiculous pathetic attempts that were laughable in the extreme. We all knew we were no better off than the common young man from the North on the other side of the wire, he wanted to be home as much as we did. Ideology means little while you are sitting in mud in the jungle when the rains of the monsoon have swollen you hand and feet to bloated painful appendages and leaches are sucking your blood and there is no relief in sight. I was instructed about the UCMJ. I knew the difference between right and wrong, I had a conscience. It is sad the leaders of that war didn't. I have lived in Vietnam for the past 6 years with my Mekong Delta raised wife. I have many in-laws who have served on both sides. Maybe my perspective is different. My conclusion is all wars are wrong and all governments are bad but Mr. Turse's account is sensationalism in the extreme. Just one old grunts take on it.

Yep, G/Sgt. Hartman certainly succeeded in creating a killer when Pvt. Gomer Pyle blew him away. I wonder if that sort of thing actually happened? I know bad officers periodically got fragged by the grunts. By the way Phil, I like your articles here, too.

[…] do read it — which I am more compelled to do now — I will report back. In the meantime, just having reviewed Nick Turse’s book on atrocities and war crimes in Vietnam, I was intrigued by Kaplan’s references in the interview (and book) to the West Point […]

This sort of lying campaign about atrocities runs in reverse, too, when Side A is discussing the behavior of soldiers of Side B. This is ESPECIALLY if Side A won, invaded Side B's country, and occupied them for years on end.

Example: Germany in World War II, vis-a-vis the four victorious Allies: the US, Britain, France, and the USSR. I may not have named them in the right order, but that also depends on your point of view.

In politics and war the biggest cuasualty is always the truth . It is even hard to get the truth a 100 yrs latter sometimes . The U.S government has not yet admitted the battle of wounded knee was a war crime , and no one dare mention the Armenian masacure to Turkey either . There is a U tube story that GUN CONTROL WORKS . 290 million people have been murdered by governments since 1949 . All these governments felt it their duty to disarm their victims first . They all claimed to be socialists they were trying to help their people .yet this is more deaths than all the wars put together for the last 2 hundred yrs in war . I suppose now I'am getting back to politics

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.